Machines for processing poultry gizzards have been available for a number of years. These machines have required that the poultry gizzard be manually removed from the poultry carcass and manually fed into the poultry processing machine after at least most of the viscera naturally attached to the gizzard was manually removed therefrom. After these machines were manually fed, the machine split the gizzard open, washed the contents out of the split gizzard and finally peeled the lining from the muscular portion of the gizzard to produce an edible product. Examples of these prior art gizzard processing machines are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,159,872; 3,172,872; 3,624,669 and 4,183,117. The primary disadvantage of these prior art gizzard processing machines is that manual operations are needed to prepare the gizzard for processing in the machine and/or to feed the machine. This has kept labor costs high to operate these gizzard processing machines.
More recently, attempts have been made to provide a mechanism to mechanically remove the viscera normally attached to the gizzard as an integral part of the poultry processing machine. Such machines with this feature are commonly known in the industry as gizzard harvesters. Examples of prior art gizzard harvesters are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,990,128; 4,057,875; 4,073,040 and 4,203,178. These gizzard harvesting machines have still required manual feeding which has continued to keep operating labor costs high. Moreover, these gizzard harvesting machines have attempted to maintain the gizzard in the same orientation during removal of the viscera and splitting of the gizzard for processing. The configuration of the gizzard and attached viscera is such that it is difficult to properly perform both these operations while the gizzard is maintained in the same orientation. As a result, these prior art gizzard harvesting machines have had difficulties in properly removing the viscera from the gizzard and subsequently properly splitting the gizzard.
Other attempts have been made to provide a viscera removal machine separate from the gizzard processing machine which mechanically removes the viscera normally connected to the gizzard. An example of this type of machine is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,074,390. These viscera removal machines as well as some of the gizzard harvesting machines have attempted to cut the viscera from the gizzard with a rotating cutting blade. These machines have had difficulty in removing the tenderlining section on the gizzard through which the viscera is attached to the gizzard in a manner that meets the approval of the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection required in poultry processing.